The stone shrugged, his skin creaking. He had a fat, wart-starred face and broad yellow teeth, a mark of handsomeness among his kind. His shoulders were broad but hunched, and his legs powerfully built but not for speed. His shirt was rotting, black cloth, fine-woven and thick. “Malik, then no Malik. Bad. Black smoke rising."

"Guess so.” Ryan's stomach turned over once, hard, then settled. The music suddenly seemed too loud. The Inkani are in town, and Paul was seen. Someone knows something. “But the moon always comes out.” And the sun, too, but mentioning sunlight is rude. After all, the Phoenicis potentials were mostly killed during the Long Dark and we haven't been able to save any since. They were closely allied with the stonekin.

The logical extension to that thought came circling back, and he realized it was bothering him. So how did the woman sitting right next to me make a Fang, then? It doesn't make sense, she was very specific that she found the instructions, bought the knife, and consecrated it.

The stone wasn't looking at him. Instead, his flat yellow eyes had come to rest on Chess, who looked back, seeming only mildly surprised though her pulse beat frantically in her wrist. Ryan could feel her heart racing, his own pulse was starting to pick up and follow hers. “Hey,” he said sharply, wanting the stone's eyes on him. “She's with me. Keep your eyes in your own head."

The stone didn't look at him. “Shaala non grigh,” he rumbled, staring at Chess, whose eyes had grown very round. “Sunlight come again soon. Listen, know, understand."

What the fuck? “She's mine,” Ryan repeated. “You have something to say, talk to me."

"Grigh non vakr.” The stone's eyes flicked contemptuously over him, and Ryan readied himself for combat. It wouldn't take much to turn this whole place into a goddamn free-for-all, he didn't want to do it, but he would if the stone made any move on her. But why? Stones didn't attack humans unless the humans came across a mating or a kenning, they were one of the few non-carnivorous Other species. “No taillaki nagàth; emmikah vakr."

Did he just say what I thought he said? “You're sure? You're absolutely sure?"

The stone shrugged, his skin moving with a sound like a leather jacket creaking. “Saw Flights in old day. Know smell. Gold under skin, soft to win."

Christ in a chariot-driven sidecar, this is the last straw. Paul, if you're not dead, I'm going to kill you myself. The thought was only halfway joking. His hand gentled on Chess's wrist, and his eyes moved up and over the interior of the bar. They were getting a few looks, but none out of the ordinary. Maybe this wasn't going to be as bad as he thought.

Just as he thought that, the lights died. All of them, and all at once. The sudden sharp smoky smell of sorcery bloomed and Ryan's skin seemed to shrink two sizes as the demon in him stretched, feeling the company of others of its kind.

The Inkani had arrived. And he had to get her out of here. All of a sudden saving Paul didn't matter so much.

Saving the only Phoenicis potential in five hundred years was the only thing that mattered. And Paul, the brainless pudding, had overlooked her to fixate on a sheela and probably gotten himself killed.

It wasn't so much the death of the lights as the sudden screaming that sent Chess's pulse into the stratosphere and made her brain fuzz into uselessness. The whole place descended into chaos; even the neon had died and it was dark like a wet bandage pressed against the eyes. She actually swallowed a scream, her wrist slipping out from under Ryan's hand as she snatched her hand to her mouth, and felt the table slide away from her, heard tinkling crashes as glass broke. Scuffling sounds, fists meeting flesh, and an absolute chaos of motion and throaty yelling swirled through the air. It sounded like the mother of all barfights happening during the mother of all blackouts, and Chess was glad to be mostly out of the way.

A stray breeze brushed her cheek. “Chess!” Ryan yelled, and the thing that had been sitting across the table from them—it looked like the illustration of a Tolkien troll, only in living color and with warts festooned with hair—made a scraping, creaking noise like a boulder breaking apart during an earthquake, with a high squeal of stressed stone.

Chess slid off the booth and hit the ground, undeniable instinct blooming just under her skin. She had to get away, it wasn't safe for her here. Whatever the troll had said to Ryan, he'd looked at her with eyebrows raised and chill appraisal on his face. Then the lights had died. And the screaming started.

How do I get myself into these situations? I'm lost in a fairy tale. Why do they call them fairy tales, when there aren't any fairies in them? Troll tales. Giant tales. Witches and gingerbread tales. She almost choked on a mad giggle and heard a deathly screech, too high and sawing to be called a scream. It spiraled up into falsetto and ended in a wet gurgle.

A deathscream. There was no mistaking it. She'd thought they were fictional inventions until she'd killed the skornac. Well, what do you know, art does imitate life. I'm living my reading material, oh God.

Shuffling footsteps. “Chess!” Ryan sounded frantic, but she couldn't make her legs work to push her back up. It was so dark, a cold that filled the marrow of her bones with ice and lead, and along with the darkness came a sudden chilling certainty that there were demons in the blackness. And that they were looking for her.

Light, she thought incoherently. I made light last night, I could do it again. But then they'd see me and they would eat me.

How wonderful. She had reverted to about three years old, huddled in her bed and terrified of the dark. But there were good reasons to be afraid of the dark, weren't there? She'd just found out how good.

A hand closed over her shoulder and she screamed, lifted bodily up from the floor. Her legs seemed not to be working properly. I'm dealing with this as well as can be expected, she thought, the books never mentioned trolls or elves or women who look like they're half-swan. Or the bartender with four arms. And Ryan just acts like it's normal. Well, of course, I am the one hunting demons after finding them in books, but this is… this is… Her brain reeled as a large hand that smelled of sun-warmed rock clamped over the lower half of her face. If Chess had had a stuffy nose she would have suffocated. Someone was carrying her as if she was a limp piece of cabbage.

I am a limp piece of cabbage, she thought, and the urge to giggle madly rose again, was squashed more by the hand over her mouth than by an effort of will, and died hysterically away. The blackness had gone strangely fuzzy, and she had the odd urge to simply curl up in a ball and let the world do what it would without her.

Shock. She was in shock. The trolls and the tall beautiful women giggling at the bar, the bartender's many arms, and the hairy thing in the booth next to theirs with eyes like flat red coins and a puglike snout… she was definitely in shock. Where was Ryan? He'd promised. What, like I can't take care of myself?

But the fey asskicking courage that had carried her through killing the skornac seemed to have deserted her.

As if on cue, his voice rose again. “Chess!” He actually screamed, a battlefield shout that tore through the rest of the noise in the air. The person carrying Chess didn't even pause, and she wondered blankly if she should try to struggle.

And I was doing so good at kickass. But her brain seemed to have stopped giving orders. There was only so much a girl could take, after all. And the swimming weakness in the dark seemed to have penetrated down to her bones. She felt like jello. Warm jello, even.